30 killed in Mexico drug violence

Thirty people were killed or found dead on Thursday in Mexico, including 13 tied-up bodies discovered inside a bus in Sinaloa, in the latest carnage linked to drug wars in the country, officials said.

The 13 had their hands tied behind their backs and were face down in a neat row, inside a bus in San Ignacio village, in northwestern Sinaloa state -- home to Mexico's largest drug cartel, local officials said.

"We have unfortunately found 13 bodies... most of them youth," Jose Jiovan Rosas Corrales, a local official, told AFP.

The unidentified victims were found with numerous bullet wounds, including from gangland-style gunshots to the head, local media reported.

In northern Chihuahua state, home to billion-dollar drug-smuggling corridors straddling the border with the United States, 17 people were killed on Thursday, including nine in Chihuahua capital, six in Ciudad Juarez and two others elsewhere in the state.

Most gruesome was the execution-style killing in Chihuahua of five suspected drug gang members who were chased down in a pickup truck by three vehicles full of gunmen who sprayed them with bullets, the local attorney general's office said.

Also in Chihuahua, a police investigator was ambushed and shot more than 60 times inside his patrol car.

More than 4,500 people have been killed this year in drug-related crime, particularly prevalent in northern Mexico, the source of most illegal drug shipments to the United States.

In Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, more than 1,900 people have been killed since the start of the year, making it Mexico's murder capital.